Blessing, mommy. Good afternoon, teacher

I have an eternal fascination for the moment when children begin to read. Maybe that is because I keep in my memory that moment of beginning when I understood how the world of letters works.

I have 6 siblings. Mom taught us all to read from a very early age, starting when we could pronounce the simplest words well.

My childhood and that of my siblings was a very beautiful childhood, although we did not have great luxuries we had a great wealth, a dual mother. On the one hand we had an extremely imaginative, playful, understanding and loving mother.

I remember with tenderness the way our mother would tell us stories at night before going to sleep. Stories she invented and stories inspired by books she had read before, mostly classic stories.

Mom was able to turn, by the magic of her words, a leftover food into a delicious dessert that she presented to our eyes in the most theatrical way possible. She was also able to distract us by inventing games and songs. I think my mother was very happy as she was able to buy us toys, although she also enjoyed building toys for us. I treasure the rag dolls that Mom sewed by hand and dressed them beautifully.

On the other hand, we had a mother who was demanding in manners, very moralistic and who wanted to educate us with strict principles.

This duality manifested itself very clearly when my mother was determined to teach us, herself, to read and write. She was proud that her children arrived at school knowing how to read fluently and with good handwriting.

It was not easy for us. Mom improvised a classroom in our living room. It had a small blackboard and small chairs that we used only to learn to read. Classes started at a precise time: 4:00 in the afternoon. From the kitchen we would hear Mom's voice ordering us to take our notebooks and pencils to go to the school she had invented for us, eight meters from the dining room and three meters from my room.

Then began a little ritual in which my loving and tender mother became a serious, demanding and inflexible teacher.

My part of the ritual consisted of saying goodbye to my mother, as we did whenever we left home, and making the necessary transition to greet the teacher, which she became by simply taking off her apron. That, in sociology, could be called a Social Role Play.

In our culture, children leaving home ask for the parents' blessing and the parents give it.

"Blessing, Mom," I used to say when I was four years old. Pragmatically speaking that meant "Mom I'm leaving the house."

"God bless you, my darling" Mom would reply. What she meant was "You have my permission to leave the house."

I must say that Mom would become the teacher in a heartbeat but I could not sit in the chair until she (as the teacher) allowed me to do so after fulfilling the ritual.

"Good afternoon, teacher." I said, respectfully.
"Good afternoon, Miss Acevedo, you may take a seat." Said the teacher.

Then the class began. The vowels, the consonants, the simple syllables, the more complex ones, the words that are written with capital letters, the words that indicate action, the articles. Homework! Writing the same sentence so many times! Learning to write one letter next to another!

I remember the joy of understanding a sentence. The teacher who was my mother invented some very funny phrases, but she did not allow us to laugh too much, ("The dog licks the soup." "Give me your hand, pigeon." "A lame man climbs the hill."). The important thing was to understand.

Sometimes I needed Mom to relieve the tension of certain moments. Then I would timidly call out to her.

"I don't understand, Mommy."

The teacher would look me in the eyes and say.

"If you keep your eyes on the book you'll understand.... And remember I'm not your mommy, I'm your teacher."

I think this phrase stayed with me forever. Both in my facets as a student and as a teacher. I firmly believe that parents and teachers should never confuse their specific roles.

I will end this memory by telling that to leave class I had to perform the ritual in reverse. I would seriously say goodbye to the teacher and pay attention to her recommendations. Then I would go to my room to leave my school supplies and when I came out I would look for my mother, who, offering me a cup of warm cocoa, would ask me with total audacity:

How was school?

Excited, I would tell her everything I had learned.